He also fended off several invasions and quelled rebellions by his premier vassals: Grimoald of Bari, Robert II of Capua, Ranulf of Alife, Sergius VII of Naples and others.

At the same time, Roger's fleet also attacked the Byzantine Empire, making Sicily a leading maritime power in the Mediterranean Sea for almost a century.

William III of Sicily, the young son of Tancred, was deposed, and Henry and Constance were crowned as king and queen.

His uncle Philip of Swabia moved to secure Frederick's inheritance by appointing Markward von Anweiler, margrave of Ancona, regent in 1198.

Frederick I continued the reformation with the Assizes of Capua (1220) and the promulgation of the Constitutions of Melfi (1231, also known as Liber Augustalis), a collection of laws for his realm that was remarkable for its time.

The Constitutions made the Kingdom of Sicily an absolute monarchy, the first centralized state in Europe to emerge from feudalism; it also set a precedent for the primacy of written law.

Instead of the boy Conradin, safely sequestered across the Alps, the Papacy now faced an able military leader who had greatly supported the Ghibelline cause at the Battle of Montaperti in 1260.

Accordingly, when negotiations broke down with Manfred in 1262, Pope Urban IV again took up the scheme of disseising the Hohenstaufen from the kingdom, and offered the crown to Charles of Anjou again.

From 1494 to 1503, successive kings of France Charles VIII and Louis XII, who were heirs of the Angevins, tried to conquer Naples (see Italian Wars) but failed.

The titles were held by the Aragonese kings of the Crown of Aragon and Kingdom of Spain until the end of the Spanish branch of the House of Habsburg in 1700.

In 1530, in an effort to protect Rome from Ottoman invasion from the south, Charles V, as king of Spain and Sicily, gave the islands of Malta and Gozo to the Knights Hospitaller in perpetual fiefdom, in exchange for an annual fee of two Maltese falcons, which they were to send on All Souls' Day to the Viceroy of Sicily.

[21] From 1713 until 1720, the Kingdom of Sicily was ruled briefly by the House of Savoy, which had received it by the terms of the Treaty of Utrecht, which brought an end to the War of the Spanish Succession.

The new king, Victor Amadeus II, travelled to Sicily in 1713 and remained a year before returning to his mainland capital, Turin, where his son the Prince of Piedmont had been acting as regent.

This change of hands opened up a period of economic flourishing and social and political reforms, with many public projects and cultural initiatives directly started or inspired by the king.

Still a minor, Ferdinand grew up amongst pleasures and leisure while the real power was safely held by Bernardo Tanucci, the president of the regency council.

During this period most of the reform process initiated by Charles came to a halt, with the king mostly absent or uninterested in the matters of state and the political helm steered by Queen Maria Carolina and prime ministers Tanucci (until 1777) and John Acton.

The latter tried to distance Naples and Sicily from the influence of Spain and Austria and to place them nearer to Great Britain, then represented by ambassador William Hamilton.

This is the period of the Grand Tour, and Sicily with its many natural and historical attractions was visited by a score of intellectuals from all over Europe that brought to the island the winds of the Age of Enlightenment, and spread the fame of its beauty in the continent.

In 1799, Napoleon conquered Naples, forcing King Ferdinand and the court to flee to Sicily under the protection of the British fleet under the command of Horatio Nelson.

The people of Sicily rebelled to this violation of its centuries-old statutes (which every king, including Ferdinand, had sworn to respect) but were defeated by the Neapolitan and Austrian forces in 1820.

In 1848–49, another Sicilian revolution of independence occurred, which was put down by the new king, Ferdinand II of the Two Sicilies, who was nicknamed Re Bomba after his 5-day bombardment of Messina.

These revolts resulted in the destruction of many agrarian areas and the rise of middle class nationalism, which eventually led to urban dwellers becoming allies of the Aragonese.

Widespread corruption and mistreatment of the lower classes by the feudal lords led to the creation of groups of brigands, attacking the nobility and destroying their fiefs.

[27] After the loss of the northern provinces in 1282 during the Sicilian Vespers and several natural disasters like the 1669 Etna eruption, the population of the Kingdom of Sicily was reduced.

[30] Where earlier scholars saw late medieval Sicily in continuous decline, Stephen Epstein argued that Sicilian society experienced something of a revival in the 15th century.

The dependence of the Angevins on north Italian commerce and financing by Florentine bankers were the main factors which led to the decline of the Kingdom's economy.

Bishops of the Greek rite were obliged to recognize the claims of the Latin Church in Sicily, while Muslim communities were no longer ruled by local emirs.

In Palermo, Muslims were allowed to publicly call for prayer in mosques, and their legal issues were settled by qadis, judges who ruled in accordance with Islamic law.

[35] After the establishment of Hohenstaufen authority, Latin- and Greek-speaking Catholics maintained their privileges, but the Muslim population was increasingly oppressed.

Eventually, the government removed the entire Muslim population to Lucera in Apulia and Girifalco in Calabria, where they paid taxes and served as agricultural laborers, craftsmen, and crossbowmen for the benefit of the king.